


trying to break the mold

by tielan



Series: sharp Evening stars and bright Morning flame [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Sedoretu, Captain America: The First Avenger, F/M, M/M, Sedoretu, This Is Not The Happy Ending You're Looking For
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-08 23:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6878509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three-quarters of a potential <i>sedoretu</i>, shooting for orbit, burning like fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	trying to break the mold

**Author's Note:**

> The _sedoretu_ marriage is a concept written about by Ursula Le Guin: _Ki’O society is divided into two halves or moieties, called (for ancient religious reasons) the Morning and the Evening. You belong to your mother’s moiety, and you can’t have sex with anybody of your moiety._
> 
> The rest of it was taken from the introduction [here](http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/le_guin_03_14_reprint/), or in the series notes.

**prologue**

At sixteen, sitting on the steps by Steve’s house, Bucky has a proposition.

“Marry me?”

Steve gives him the sideways look that usually means he’s waiting for the punchline. “Now?”

“No, stupid.” He bumps shoulders, lightly because Steve’s still getting over another hacking cold. “When we grow up. And not you-and-me-married either, but Maisie’s-family-married. When we’re older and find an Evening and a Morning wife.”

“Serious?”

“Dead serious.”

It’s more than just that they’re Evening and Morning, or best friends, or that Steve needs someone to keep an eye on him because God knows he has no sense of self-preservation. It’s not even that he likes the feel of Steve’s mouth under his – the way Steve leans into him when they kiss.

It’s just... It feels right.

Steve leans back on his elbows, staring out at the street, then glances up at Bucky through those stupid-long lashes of his. “Okay.”

“Just like that?” Then again, this is Steve – he leaps into _everything_.

“Sure.”

Bucky finds himself grinning over his shoulder at Steve. “Sweet.”

 

 

When Peggy Carter is sixteen, her father – a Morning man – marries a woman without moiety.

The marriage – conventional, between moiety and non-moiety – is nothing to comment on. Even the old stricture against a Morning man marrying a Morning woman, or an Evening man marrying an Evening woman is seen as foolishness in these modern times. _An old-fashioned taboo, with little reason to it and even less rhyme,_ say the modernists; _we are beyond such things in the west_.

Her stepmother is a lovely woman, but she was brought up in the modern way, with no understanding or appreciation of the things of old.

When Beth comes to live under their roof, all mention of moiety vanishes from the household lexicon. Peggy’s decision to stop seeing Robert Bailey is reduced to ‘ _I don’t think we’ll suit so well_ ’ while Michael’s relationship with Molly and Viktor Hansen, and Lizzy Parsons is phrased as ‘ _some friends I’ll be staying with when I’m back_ ’.

Peggy doesn’t protest – her stepmother has the right to arrange her house as she pleases – but she does chafe a little under the restrictiveness.

It’s one of the reasons Peggy agrees to marry Fred Wells.

 

 

The emergence of those without moiety is postulated to be some six thousand years ago, during the Ubaid period in Mesopotamia.

It is said that the adults of a city were struck down by the gods for their arrogance and insolence, leaving none but the very young. The survivors were children barely old enough to speak, none of them old enough to know their moiety.

In other times, other cultures, the children would have been left for dead. Yet the priests declared that the gods had spared these children for a reason – and so they, too, were spared the death that might have been theirs.

Yet with no mother’s line, they could have no moiety, and their children could claim no moiety as their own.

Somehow, through the centuries of human history, they survived, spread, and thrived, until today, in the early 21st Century, the percentages of those who claim no moiety is up to 40%, not including those who choose not to disclose their moiety to the Census takers.

Modern anthropological studies frequently point to the lineages of those without moiety as a study of how humanity has socially adapted through the years – occasionally in difficult and complicated ways – but frequently to the broadening of our minds.

 

 

At first, Steve isn’t entirely sure of Peggy – yes, she’s Evening and she’s attracted, but what if she doesn’t want a _sedoretu_ marriage?

It’s not until one night in the bar when Jim Morita is telling them about his family that Steve realises Peggy hasn’t batted a lash at Jim's two Morning sisters, a Morning brother, three Evening brothers, and an Evening sister, while most of the other Howling Commandos are struggling.

“And you say the Japs aren’t bringing foreign ways into the country?” Dum Dum half-jokes.

“ _Sedoretu_ marriages are a tradition as old as society,” Peggy says crisply, cutting across Jim’s frown, and halting Bucky as he leans in to protest the unthinking slur. “My brother was in a _sedoretu_ – informal, perhaps, but they were going to marry after the war. Are you going to call _me_ foreign, too, Sergeant Dugan?”

“Well you _are_ ,” Dum Dum says wryly, although he nudges Jim in apology.

“But you’re not—” Falsworth’s eyes dart towards Steve, shy as a young woman faced with a bar full of soldiers.

“My parents weren’t _sedoretu_ ,” she acknowledges. “But the tradition wasn’t uncommon in my mother’s family.”

“There were a couple _sedoretu_ families back home.” Bucky sits back in his chair and his elbow bumps Steve’s. “Nothing foreign about it.”

It’s not until later, as they’re leaving the bar, that Steve looks over at the woman on his arm. “I didn’t know your brother was _sedoretu_.”

“Well, it’s not really something you talk about these days. And my mother always said it took the right blend of personalities. Michael was just lucky to find them.”

Peggy lifts her eyes to Steve, the invitation in them plain enough.

It’s Steve’s turn to blush in the London night.

 

 

Bucky Barnes falls to his death from a train in Europe, leaving Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter a severed half of what was only ever three-quarters of a potential marriage.

Steve Rogers crashes down in the _Valkyrie_ , leaving Peggy Carter an unacknowledged, unrecognised _sedoretu_ widow.

Peggy Carter formally marries Daniel Souza, who has no moiety, but who also has no objections to his children being acknowledged as Evening.

She never regrets her conventional marriage.

Still, sometimes she wonders what it might have been like.

 

**Author's Note:**

> And just to complicate the situation, I have introduced 'non-moiety' - people who are neither Morning nor Evening moiety, and therefore can marry/have sex with all without fear of taboo. A non-moiety individual may join a _sedoretu_ in any capacity, so long as the Marriages and Sacrileges remain intact.


End file.
